As if by magic, the stage morphed into a massive cathedral with imposing stained-glass windows and a marriage archway. High Priestesses “Material Girl” Madonna and pure “royalty,” Queen Latifah, then appeared on stage to join in marriage 33 couples of numerous sexual permutations, thereby sealing the new religion’s Oneist creed: all religions and all sexualities are One—to the thunderous applause of the thousands present, and to the approbation of millions of television viewers.

The 2023 Grammy’s made a huge splash, while horrifying Christians with its blatant satanic imagery and pagan religious overtones. But this is not so new! As I sat to write an article about the 2023 event, I remembered my reaction to the 2014 Grammy Awards. I wrote the following account:
In 1971, Don McLean sang “Bye-bye, Miss American Pie,” and asked: “…do you have faith in God above, if the Bible tells you so, [or] do you believe in rock and roll, can music save your mortal soul?” Back then there were still options. Asking these two questions in a pop song made sense. No longer. We’ve come a long way, baby. The latest Grammy Awards (January 26, 2014) celebrating the liberating power of music, launched in prime time, with all the stunning technological Hollywood bells and whistles, as THE NEW AMERICAN RELIGION.
Way back in 1988, at the height of his career as a recognized journalist (having made big money ghost-writing Donald Trump’s biography, Art of the Deal), Tony Schwartz went on a journey to understand what was happening to the soul of America. In 1995 he published What Really Matters, an examination of the thought and practice of the leaders of the New Age Movement. He discovered a unique, made-in-America spirituality that joined Eastern and Western practice into “a new American wisdom tradition” that would save the world. On January 26, 2014, that spiritual tradition came out on network television in a resounding worship celebration of a new American religion.
Driven by the “faith” of the leading contemporary purveyors of hip-hop and rap, the moment was enthusiastically sanctioned by the prominently featured elder wise ones—in particular Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr and Yoko Ono.
The religious service began with serious “worship,” led by Beyoncé—at 6 pm Pacific, 7pm Central and 8pm Eastern, while children are still watching. Of course, that’s all just fine, since President Obama praised Beyoncé as an important role model for children, including his own. Her outlandishly sexualized dance routine, in a revealing black thong bodysuit over fishnet tights, simulating all the moves belonging solely to the privacy of the marital bedroom, was an act of heterosexual public debauchery. Her hit song, “Drunk in Love” served as an introductory hymn that set the worship tone for the evening. “I’ve been drinking…I get filthy when that liquor gets into me…[I can’t bring myself to type all the words she sang]…Drunk in love.” Beyoncé proudly embraces her sexuality, draping herself in pseudo-ethical notions like “pride” and “self-affirmation,” giving the appearance of moral high-ground while groveling in the gutter.
The order of service continued with testimonies of deliverance. Ex-evangelical Katy Perry (famous for her song, “I Kissed a Girl and Liked It”) celebrated her apostasy, dressed up as a witch with a large red cross on her chest, and was symbolically “burned at the stake.” A sister in rebellion, Kacey Musgraves (who sang in church as a child) won the Country award with her ballad, “Follow Your Arrow.” The arrows were anti-Christian barbs at church-going and traditional ethics. Her song culminated in the exhortation to escape those old-time religion chains:
So make lots of noise, Kiss lots of boys,Or kiss lots of girls, if that’s something you’re into,When the straight and narrow gets a little too straight.
The three-hour service ended on an ecstatic, unholy high note. Macklemore and Ryan Lewis (Grammy for Best New Artist), began the finale with their hit song “Same Love,” which has become an anthem in the gay community. Its religious overtones are easy to see:
America the brave still fears what we don’t knowAnd “God loves all his children” is somehow forgotten.Whatever god you believe in, we come from the same one;Strip away the fear, underneath, it’s all the same love…About time that we raised up!
As if by magic, the stage morphed into a massive cathedral with imposing stained-glass windows and a marriage archway. High Priestesses “Material Girl” Madonna and pure “royalty,” Queen Latifah, then appeared on stage to join in marriage 33 couples of numerous sexual permutations, thereby sealing the new religion’s Oneist creed: all religions and all sexualities are One—to the thunderous applause of the thousands present, and to the approbation of millions of television viewers.
The vacuous marriage sacrament of the “Grammys religion” and its further trivialization as an entertainment stunt, only underlines the spiritually empty gospel that Tinsel Town and its beautiful people were pushing, unopposed, into the homes of people who pay these artists their inflated salaries. There is no competing message, no other opinion allowed from other artists, no apparent way for so many to hear the truth. This is a formula for cultural collapse.
Fast Forward to 2023
At the 2023 Grammys, the religious theme went even further in the promotion of Satanism. Two trans, non-binary, androgynous artists Sam Smith and Kim Petras performed a song entitled “Unholy,” worshiping Satan. Smith was dressed in bright red with horns, surrounded by half-dressed young women twerking him in a highly sexualized manner. All this worshiping of “Satan” was intended to make a non-binary appeal to children to worship Satan and themselves.1 Madonna was still part of the event and this satanic, sexual scene on live TV shows us how far popular culture is falling. It is strange indeed for Pfizer, one of the world’s leading pharmaceutical companies, to sponsor this shocking event.
The Babylon Bee makes fun of the event. “In a rare public statement, the Prince of Darkness has distanced himself from last night’s Grammys performance by Sam Smith, which he denounced as “cringy” and “appalling”: “listen, folks, I enjoy demonic sexual perversion just as much as the next guy, but this is just too much,” said the frustrated Father of Lies. “I’m the god of this world! I appear as an angel of light! It’s supposed to be sneaky and subtle! Has Hollywood lost its ability to be subtle? What on earth happened to this town?” 2
But Satanism is not a joke. Such a way of thinking gives occasion to the most radical kind of conclusion. Maria Molzer, a colleague of Carl Jung, who “analyzed” members of some of America’s most wealthy families, (Rockefellers and McCormicks) boldly expresses Jung’s thinking on the conjuctio (joining): “I too think that God and the Devil are two manifestations of the same principle, and that one necessitates the other…We must learn to value the Devil again. The Christian religion expelled him. He asks for his rights again.”3 In the Jungian therapeutic world, Satan becomes your friend. As the esoteric poet, W.B.Yeats said: “Frater Demon est Deus Inversus” (brother Satan is the other side of God).4
Nine years after my original description of the event, the Grammys has gone farther in its rejection of God and its embrace of the very opponent of God, namely Satan. Of course Christians must make this plain, but my friend Thaddeus Williams shows us the right conclusion, as he directly addresses Kim and Sam, the two young non-binary singers who praised Satan in the Grammys this year. With this gladly I end my text, for the Gospel is God’s love of sinners.5
“Dear Kim, your rejection of religion hasn’t made you non-religious. You are still bowing, only to the finite creation rather than the infinite Creator. Let me be crystal clear for you and Sam: You are loved in a way that no sexual experience can grant. We absolutely want you to be a part of Jesus’s movement to bring healing and redemption to a fallen cosmos. We, like you, have made spectacles of our self-worship. But there is grace for us all. Jesus is infinitely more joyous and meaningful than all the world’s accolades and affirmation. He is where our deepest identity is found. Ever since Jesus’ death and resurrection everything changed. The system of self-glorification is on its way out. Please, don’t find yourself on the wrong side of the future. Don’t spend your career parroting the doomed dogmas of an ancient snake. Repent. Find eternal life in Jesus.”
Dr. Peter Jones is scholar in residence at Westminster Seminary California and associate pastor at New Life Presbyterian Church in Escondido, Calif. He is director of truthXchange, a communications center aimed at equipping the Christian community to recognize and effectively respond to the rise of paganism. Used with permission.

[1] See Thaddeus Williams, https://wng.org/opinions/satanism-on-display-at-the-grammy-awards-1676031920?fbclid=IwAR3K3i5aJc26boES6qJujn5wLxfhgwjQeBGyTMccxg3oaps-LKf3RSS2nDM&mibextid=l066kq
[2] https://babylonbee.com/news/horrified-satan-distances-self-from-grammys
[3] Noll, The Aryan Christ, 197.
[4] http://yeatsvision.com/Esoteric.html.
[5] https://wng.org/opinions/satanism-on-display-at-the-grammy-awards-1676031920?fbclid=IwAR3K3i5aJc26boES6qJujn5wLxfhgwjQeBGyTMccxg3oaps-LKf3RSS2nDM&mibextid=l066kq
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There is only one way to out of this moral crisis, and it’s by returning to the concept of a unitary right as an objective divine standard in which all society must conform. The question we are confronted with today is not “what should we do?” Rather it is, “Do we have the moral courage to do it?”

During the 2020 campaign candidate Joe Biden famously stumbled over the Declaration of Independence saying “We hold these truths to be self-evident. All men and women are created…by the…you know…you know the thing…”
Apparently, Mr. Biden didn’t know the thing. More disturbingly, a large swath of the American public don’t “know the thing” either.
The thing that Mr. Biden was referring to was, of course, the endowment of rights bestowed on men by their Creator including, but not limited to, Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.
This section of the Declaration is one of the most famous and frequently quoted portions of the historic document. Yet, there is something in this text that has escaped the attention of almost everyone except perhaps a few knowledgeable political philosophers and historians.
So, as it turns out, hardly anyone actually “knows the thing.”
As the fourth century church father, Basil the Great, pointed out in De Spiritu Sancto, every phrase, every word, and every syllable is important when trying to understand a text. To take his argument one step further we can say that every letter is important.
Oliver O’Donovan reminds us of Edward Gibbon’s somewhat exaggerated claim that Christianity was once divided over a single letter. That history is repeating itself only this time with a different letter from the English alphabet. Not since the Christological debates of the fourth century has one letter had so much power to change the course of human events. In the fourth century it was the Greek iota that split the church. In our time it is the letter “s” at the end of the word rights.
While the split is largely between academicians at this point, my concern is for the practical and ethical outworking of O’Donovan’s perspective as he interacts and takes issue with the work of Nicholas Wolterstorff. This essay is meant to be an accurate summary and application of O’Donovan’s position which I take to be persuasive.
The Declaration speaks of rights as a plural and inherent concept grounded in the individual person. The ancients, however, nearly always spoke of right in the singular. Translators have often missed this and translated Hebrew and Greek texts in the plural instead of the singular when the equivalent word for right is carried over into English as it is in Proverbs 8:8-9 and Jeremiah 5:28. The shift begins in the twelfth century and gradually morphs until it reaches its apex in the revolutionary literature of the eighteenth century such as the American Declaration of Independence.
Since the idea of rights conceived in the Declaration are inherent in each person then the practical result is a multiplicity of human rights that can be expanded indefinitely. There are now potentially as many rights as there are people. This conception makes rights synonymous with justice.
The problem arises when these rights must be enforced and defended by using the apparatus of the state. This is precisely where the woke western world finds itself at present, and all political, economic, and linguistic means are being used to coerce people, cultures, and entire states to comply. The message is simple: comply or be canceled. This is no small matter when armies are currently being mobilized to cancel countries that refuse to conform.
This is a seismic shift from the ancient concept of a unitary right as an objective divine standard embedded in the cosmos. In this way of thinking, as John Carlson explains, justice is the measure of society’s realization of this divine order established by God. Moreover, this unitary right cannot be severed from righteousness itself. In the Bible, human rights are always conferred by God in the context of the covenant community. Hence, the right that we have is to cultivate virtue and conform to the divine standard. Whatever does not conform to the divine standard cannot be a right. It can only be wrong.
In the end, these are two different conceptual histories of justice. As O’Donovan warned, “The moment will come when different readings of the world cash out in different practical determinations.” There is much at stake as we can already see in the western world.
Ironically, many conservatives in America nostalgically think that all we need to do is return to the principles of our founding documents to save our country. Until, and unless, we are willing and able to part with the single letter that is causing all the mischief we are still going to be faced with such things as LBGTQ+ rights, drag queen hour at elementary schools, the grooming of young school children, and the mutilation of a 5-year old’s genitalia.
There is only one way to out of this moral crisis, and it’s by returning to the concept of a unitary right as an objective divine standard in which all society must conform. The question we are confronted with today is not “what should we do?” Rather it is, “Do we have the moral courage to do it?”
Earlier this year Governor DeSantis and the Florida legislature were applauded by some, and attacked by many, when they banned classroom instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity for children ages 5-9. I commend the governor and the legislature for protecting kindergarteners through third-graders, but what about fourth, fifth, and sixth graders, and so on. This is essentially putting a band-aid on a cancer. Or to put it another way, it’s treating the symptom not the cause.
The cause is the single letter “s.” And as Jesus said about eyes and hands that cause you to sin, “It is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body be thrown into hell.”
As for that mischievous letter “s,” it’s past time to pluck it out, and cut it off.
Jim Fitzgerald is a Minister in the Presbyterian Church in America and a missionary in the Middle East and North Africa.
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Written by R.C. Sproul |
Saturday, December 25, 2021
When the minister interrupted his sermon and listened to the chimes and then leaned over the pulpit and said, “It’s Christmas,” I was ready to walk through the door into heaven. It was all the joy that I could handle because now for the first time I was experiencing this pageantry as reality, as truth, as something that had really taken place.

I remember as a young boy growing up in Pittsburgh and always dreaming of a white Christmas. It was a tradition in our home to go to the Christmas Eve service every year. That service began at eleven o’clock, but we would have to assemble outside of the church at about quarter after ten because so many people congregated for that special candlelight event. It was filled with pageantry and great choral music. And at about thirteen minutes to twelve, the minister would begin his Christmas Eve homily. And just as the clock reached twelve o’clock, in the middle of his sermon, there was a signal given to the organist, and the organist would play the chimes in the church as if they were the chimes of a clock striking twelve. The pastor would stop his sermon in mid-sentence as the chimes would begin to sound one, two, three, four, and we would all sit there in the pews and count them. As soon as the twelfth tone had registered, the pastor would smile to the congregation and he would say, “It’s Christmas. And may I be the first on this day to wish you a Merry Christmas?
Well, that used to send chills up and down my spine. It was a tradition.
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